September 18, 2005

dogs do bite

Oh they look so cute. But even though dogs live with us every day, they are still wild things. We assume that our civilization and "modernity" is permenant, that our dogs are thoroughly tame. But nature can be unrelenting and definitive and raw. Hurricanes devastate, dogs bite and pancreas' fail. This frightens us and we imagine we can control the fundamental wildness or unpredictability of it all. We comfort ourselves by saying that life with diabetes is normal, that dogs off leash won't bite, that levies in New Orleans won't break. And though we make amazing breakthroughs that do improve life, uncontrollable wildness will also, always, still exist. Nature tooth and claw.